Limeys [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

The sickness known as scurvy was responsible for up to 75 percent of deaths on lengthy sea voyages. More sailors died from disease than in combat with an enemy, weather, or bad navigation. As early as 1747 Dr. James Lind conducted testing that anticipated methodologies hundreds of years ahead of their time that demonstrated steps to overcoming the problem, even though the actual Vitamin C that was the key was not identified until 1932. It was in this year that the hexuronic acid and Vitamin C were identified as one and the same, and this critical element was finally renamed ascorbic acid.

The human body is fantastically complex. Unfortunately this same amazing machine does not produce Vitamin C unlike many other animals. This inability has been responsible for millions of deaths, and remains a killer to the present day. Large population transfers in the form of refugees generally suffer horrendous numbers of dead. Lack of Vitamin C is not the sole cause, but it remains as deadly as it has ever been, while at the same time remaining so easy to prevent.

I think most people have heard of scurvy and also have a variety of ideas about who was responsible for finding the key to a cure. What may be less familiar are the centuries that it took to adopt the cure once it was known, and the intentional choices repeatedly made to not provide the food to protect the men who manned these ships. This book is filled with charlatans who peddled worthless cures, which were at times even deadly, and made a fortune selling them. They were able to do so as those in the military and government often stood to gain from quack products, as opposed to providing fruit that would ensure the safety of their men. This history is easily among the worst examples of those in positions of power placing next to no value on human life.

This is a fascinating story, well thought out and shared, and should be of interest to anyone who is inquisitive.

Dr. James Lind, who in 1747 conducted what is considered the worlds first clinical trial, established that oranges and lemons cure scurvy. Yet, because of the lack of understanding by people and Lind's inability to push and publicize his discovery enough, sailors, particularly those in the Royal Navy making extended ocean trips, continued to die by the thousands until the early-1790's, when the Admiralty decreed that lemons and their juice be issued to every ship. By 1795, scurvy in the Royal Navy was eliminated, except in cases where supplies of lemon juice ran out.

The most amazing part of the story still lay ahead, because scurvy returned in force during the 1800's, and quack cures were still in use until the 1900's! I leave it up to you to read the book to learn why this happened.

The book even mentions Dr. Linus Pauling's work with Vitamin C in the late 1900's.

All in all, an excellent read. I would give it 4.5 stars if that were possible, because the writing slows down a little in spots. All writers of science history should study the excellent writing of Dava Sobel, the author of Longitude, the superb history of John Harrison and his clocks.

Well, the truth is a little more complex than that, and contains some pertinent lessons for our own time. The trial involved only 12 men divided into 6 groups, two of whom got two oranges and a lemon while the others got various other remedies of current interest, including dilute sulfuric acid. The fruit receivers got better, and the others did not. This was the only real trial during the several centuries of extended sea voyages, and was not enough evidence to overcome the objections of amateur observers, anecdotal reports, quacks with their own pixie dust to sell, and the opinions of the committees of the connected. Truth be told, the modest Scot did not really push the method for study hard enough, and complicated his message with speculation and caveats. He was unable to harness the commercial motives of the right people to finally triumph in his own lifetime. Even as late as our own Civil War, and in the concentration camps of the Boer War, tens of thousands continued to perish of scurvy.

Interestingly, one of the reasons for the failure, traced by the author, is the confusion of the terminology of the day, when "lemon" and "lime" were terms used inconsistently and interchangeably, while their anti-scorbutic powers differed significantly. One can easily sneer at the ignorance of the those times, but be startled to realize that the same sort of problem exists today in the multi-billion dollar controversy over asbestos, in which two sorts of minerals, comprising six distinct minerals with distinct chemical structures are all lumped together under the same term: asbestos. Journalists and dwellers in the bowels of the EPA and OSHA are as indifferent to the distinction and the evidence for a great difference in the dangers inherent in each of them, as any committee of the Admiralty of Lind's day.

As far as the inadequacy of Lind's clinical trial, these problems of methodology have hardly gone away. Spend a few hours researching the clinical data on the important problem of second hand cigarette smoke, and tremble before the power of the mass media and the disregard of the uplifters for real scientific data.

Harvey has chronicled the complexities of the discovery well, and his tale serves as a cautionary lesson for those interested in how the truth may finally come to prevail, even in our own time of a plethora of shoddy science, bureaucratic safety committees, and dishonest journalism.